Freshly Pressed Feline?

Tuesday will be the winter solstice. Winter here means that our cat will not be spending as much time outdoors. She doesn’t care much for snow and ice. In the past few weeks she’s been trying out various new indoor places to sleep/hang out. Today she decided to try out the ironing board. My daughter came over today and had a sewing project in process. The cat wanted to help out I guess.

Argh about the lunar eclipse. My parents bought Abby several children’s almanacs, so we’ve been reading all kinds of fun astronomical facts. We were very excited about the prospect of watching a lunar eclipse, but not particularly thrilled about the time. Waking a 5-year (and her 35-year old mother) at zero dark thirty is a risky venture at best.

Looks like you all have the clouds there anyway. So yeah, argh. We’ll be watching it on the internet. I’m sure there will be more astronomical wonders in the skies soon enough for you and Abby to enjoy.

She is pretty good cat. Except when she craps in the kitchen. Which she does this every year in preparation for her vernal indoor cycle. Along with sleeping in weird places. She’s a little dopey, but maybe that goes along with the chillaxation. And fluffiness.

Thank you for the solstice/eclipse/full moon reminder; I shall be watching, clouds permitting 🙂 Alright, I won’t report you to the O(nline)SPCA, but just let me ask: Was the iron plugged in at the time?
The kittypuppy board cover complete with actual kitty is just too precious!

Hi MusEditions! Please let me know if you see the eclipse. My wife was just reading that the last time a lunar eclipse occurred at the winter solstice was in 1638.

I believe that the iron was plugged in, but it’s a cordless iron. Plus I’m pretty sure my daughter had it on the ‘Cat’ setting. Does that help? 😀

The ironing board cover’s been there for years, the cat musta just noticed. She’s not terribly smart. Ate too many flying squirrel spleens I think. Oh wait, no that’s the part she always leaves on our welcome mat.

It’s a pity us New Zealanders missed out on the lunar eclipse – I didn’t even know there was one! What does a lunar eclipse look like? Is it the same as a solar eclipse, but with the earths shadow or something?

You’ll probably be seeing a lunar eclipse sometime soon. They’re fairly common. Yes, it’s when the moon passes into the earth’s shadow. The cool thing is that the earth’s atmosphere disperses the shadow in a way that makes the moon look all orange and red before it passes into the darkest part of the earth shadow, what’s called the umbra. However I’m not so sure that’s any cooler than the fact that the disk of the moon and the disk of the sun as they appear in our sky, are exactly the same size! So a solar eclipse is that much more amazing because of that rather spectacular coincidence, right? We can see the sun’s corona because of this. Is that cool or what?

The ironing board was probably still a little warm. Where I used to live, in that little village, some kittens once had established themselves somewhere under the car or maybe on the tires. When we drove down the hill, the kittens fell out. One raced up a tree and up there it sat and screamed for hours until the firemen could come and rescue him. What happened to the other ones, I cannot remember.

Is the internet down or is it just WordPress? I read that WordPress has taken on 400 000 bloggers from Windows Live. Things are awfully slow. This morning it took me 45 minutes to update a post.

Our cat is frequently seen on the hood of our cars or visitors’ cars. Assume that she’s enjoying the warmth of the engine. I thought that firemen rescuing kittens in trees only happened in Norman Rockwell paintings. 🙂

I haven’t noticed any such issues with WordPress. It’s been very stable and consistent for me whenever I use it, which is frequently. There are so many things that can cause slow performance on internet sites. Do you make a habit of regularly clearing out your web cache? If not, then I recommend that you download and install a freeware product called CCleaner. It does a nice job keeping internet temp files from “clogging” your browser(s).

Thank you for the suggestion. If you don’t have any problems, then it must be my server. I have now prepared some knitting to knit while waiting for things to appear and/or disappear, depending. In fact, this isn’t knitting, but crocheting. It is completely mindless. It is a blanket. I could work on it while sleeping, but I did most of it while waiting for the internet.

As bad as yesterday I haven’t seen it in years, and so I thought that maybe the cyber war had started. If there were a cyber war, I think nobody would acknowledge it, because the victim would have to act as if the attack had barely been perceptible.

The cat photos are real härzig.

As I recall, your internet service provider (ISP) has had problems before, no? A good thing to know is whether other people using the same ISP are also having trouble. Especially the people in your building. This is a really important piece of information. Ask your internet-using neighbors if they’re having similar delays. Does your computer connect to internet by wire (Ethernet cable) or wireless? If wireless, is that connection shared by many other users? And do you notice any speed difference at different times of the day or night?

The CCleaner software I recommended is only good for keeping your own computer clear of the buildup of temporary internet files, which are the result of normal web browsing activity.

I think you’re right about the start of the cyber war. The security people would not want to admit that their shields were penetrated. And first attacks would be as stealthy as possible. But China would get the blame.

But “resinous, slow-moving” is harzig: there is no Umlaut, and it comes from “Harz” = “resine”, the honey coloured thick sticky juice that flows out of some fir trees’ wounds.

“Härzig”, with an Umlaut, is only dialect, comes from Herz =heart and means “cute”.
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I downloaded the CCleaner, but when I was going to install it, it announced its intention to install two Google programs, one of them the Google search engine that works on a computer as if it were part of the internet, and so I desisted.

Anyway, that same day in the evening, my computer suddenly went back to normal as to speed of connection, meaning that nearly two weeks of service cuts, 3 or 4 hours at a time, and slowdowns had been at the provider’s choice when he needed to do some maintenance work.

Good work on your download. Many freeware downloads make an attempt to install some other browser toolbar or some crap. It’s one way that the Robin Hood types who’ve created a useful freeware are able to make some money, by “partnering” with Google or Yahoo, McAfee, Norton, or some other larger concern. Good job spotting that option too. Most people just click right on through all the installation windows without reading any of it, thus ending up with unwanted software. Usually there is a check box that the user can clear to opt out of the advertising-ware. CCleaner has been around for quite some time, and is a trustworthy product even though they have partnered up with Google in this way. Maybe if more of us clicked the “Donate” button … Providing a useful product for free on the web for a few years is a great way for a software developer to gain recognition. I still recommend CCleaner, minus the Google bits, as it does a very nice job of cleaning up after all the popular web browsers. Speaking of which, have you ever tried any other web browsers, e.g. Firefox or Google Chrome?

Sounds like the ISP was the problem after all. That’s good, I guess, in that you don’t have to worry that your computer has a problem.

But I think my browswer IS Firefox, though it is also called Mozilla. I have had it for a very long time, many years. I don’t like to get additional toolbars because I rather frequently make screen shots and then I have to close them to get more of the picture I want to get.

Yes, the organization that supports and distributes the ‘open source’ Firefox browser is called Mozilla. They have been around since 1998. The current version (3.6.13) works very nicely.

If you like a clean and open looking browser, I recommend trying Google’s Chrome browser. It’s very fast too. As with other Google downloads, pay close attention to what the installation actually includes. Microsoft has built their next version of Internet Explorer (version 9- still in beta) to look a lot like Google Chrome.